Monday, June 24, 2013

A Surprising Faith in Gentlemen’s Agreements (Mr. Teddy Bear)

The tv show
begins with ... the shooting of a tv show:a man is about to be interviewed in a studio; he opens his mouth to
speak, and falls to the floor, dead.The
cameras – both those we see and those we don’t – close in on his dead
face.Cue the credits, after which we
start with a closeup of an anatomical cutaway of a human face.Pan right, and we see a living face –
Steed’s.And throughout the episode,
Steed and Gale are constantly being watched by cameras.

Thus series 2
starts with the surrealism and self-awareness that was not much in evidence in
series 1 but will become the norm later in the series.And our main duo is now Steed and Gale, not
Keel and Steed; for this is the first episode of the Cathy Gale era (to be
specific, the first to air, not the first made; but here, as in my Danger Man and Star Trek blogs, I’m going through the episodes by airdate, not
production date).

Whereon hangs a
tale.The gap between the first and
second series was nearly a year, the delay being due to an industrial dispute.
(As I’ve explained elsewhere, I prefer not to
say “due to a strike,” since to treat workers’ unwillingness to meet employers’
terms, rather than employers’
unwillingness to meet workers’ terms, as the
cause of the delay is to acquiesce in the normativity of employers’ getting
their way as the default, that which stands in no need of explanation or
justification.)According to Patrick
Macnee:

The
dispute was between the British Actors’ Equity Association and Independent
Television.Before the birth of ITV in
1955, acting on television – BBC television – had been accepted as an extension
of straight theatre work or film work.When ITV came into being the situation changed.Viewing figures (ratings) became a consideration.As programmes began to reach a larger
audience, the ITV companies saw their profits increase dramatically and Equity
decided that its membership should receive a bigger slice of the cake. ...
[T]hey were demanding an increase in the minimum fee paid to artistes for
programmes seen on the network, additional increases for shows that were
partially networked and a much higher rehearsal fee.(The Avengers and Me, p. 29)

In any case, by
time the industrial dispute was over the following year (a compromise was
reached), Ian Hendry was gone – whether quit or fired is disputed.It appears to have been Sydney Newman who
suggested that the new partner should be a woman; but the distinctive,
role-reversal combo of action heroine and dandy male seems to have emerged –
gradually – at least in part from the initiative of the actors themselves (though
the fact that Honor Blackman’s dialogue was written as though for a man obviously
helped).Paul Cornell writes:

Patrick
Macnee, at this point, makes one of a series of wonderful decisions.At the same time as Cathy is being empowered,
he starts to put aside elements of his own power as a hero (his gun, his
fisticuffs, his wisdom) in order to give Mrs Gale more of the spotlight.I say Macnee rather than Steed, because, from
interviews, it becomes obvious that Macnee had very definite and laudable aims
in mind, ones that were sometimes utterly at odds with the show’s producers. (Avengers Dossier, p. 346)

And according to
Macnee (Blind In One Ear, p. 223), he
and Blackman developed the idea that their characters should address each other
by their last names.(Macnee – like that
other spy-fi Paddy Mac, Patrick McGoohan – would also eventually refuse to have
his character use a gun, at least regularly.)

The show’s
much-vaunted “feminist” aspect (such as it is, of course) begins not with Emma
Peel but with Cathy Gale (and actually recedes a bit with Peel, as we’ll
see – to say nothing of Diana Rigg’s own antifeminism).Gale quickly establishes herself
as determined, competent, and unflappable; in one scene, she evades a man who’s
been tailing her by disabling his motorcycle in a manner that displays a
working knowledge of motorcycles that few 1960s tv shows would have given a
woman character.

Honor Blackman
describes her character as “the first feminist to come into a television
serial; the first woman to fight back.”(quoted in Kathleen Tracy, Diana Rigg: The Biography, p. 49) And Macnee reports a fan letter from
a feminist thanking him for his efforts to “further our emancipation” via the
“unusual degree of intelligence and civilization” with which he treated his
female co-stars.(Blind In One Ear, pp. 268-9)Though one has to say that Steed’s air of mocking superiority toward
Gale through most of this episode doesn’t fit that picture terribly well;
through most of the episode he seems to be enjoying their banter a good deal
more than she is.Still, it’s early days
yet.(And since I haven’t seen many
episodes from the Gale era, I don’t really know what to expect in the future.)

TOP: Good. BOTTOM: Not good.

Gale is
introduced without preamble, as though she and Steed have been working together
for some time (and we are free to imagine that they were, in between Steed’s
adventures with Keel); and her status as “Mrs.” Gale is initially unexplained.The sexual-or-not nature of their
relationship is teased with a scene in which Steed and Gale are rolling in the
floor in one another’s arms – which turns out to be martial arts practice.Steed’s attempt (forcefully rebuffed) to kiss
Gale during this practice suggests that the attraction may be real but one-way.

To viewers of the
1998 Avengers movie, the title “Mr.
Teddy Bear,” and prospect of a villain using a teddy bear disguise, will
inspire fear and dread.But be of good
cheer:what the movie handled execrably,
this episode manages well.The eponymous
Mr. Bear, a professional assassin of unknown appearance, leads our leads on a
cat-and-mouse chase through a surreal landscape of Scooby-Doo houses filled
with weird props (including cigarettes with chimpanzee fingerprints on them).

The feel of a “romp” is encouraged by the cheerful,
indeed gleeful, almost amoral way that Steed
revels in the ingenuity of Bear’s crimes.But the episode has darker moments, especially toward the end with the
tense strategy game between Steed and Gale (which will remind Sherlock fans of a similar scene in “A
Study in Pink”).

This episode gives us our first look at Steed’s
supervisor (codenamed 110 – perhaps a nod to 007?), as well as of Steed’s dog
(a Dalmatian named Freckles, who incidentally proves to be utterly useless as a
watchdog).

Budget constraints – particularly the
no-retakes-unless-absolutely-necessary policy – show themselves when Agent 110
– or rather the actor playing him – accidentally calls Gale “Jail” (well,
“Gaol,” I suppose).I also suspect that
the automatic cigarette case was supposed to open before, rather than after, Gale refused the cigarette.